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ISLAMABAD, Nov 19: United States air strikes on an old mujahedin base in eastern Afghanistan on Monday killed seven members of the newly installed anti-Taliban administration in the region, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) agency said.
The AIP said US warplanes pounded the Shamshad base in Ningarhar province - which was also attacked on Sunday - killing 30 people.
“We fail to understand what the Americans want to achieve by continuing the bombing when no Taliban or Arabs are there now,” AIP quoted an Afghan border guard as saying.
Shamshad village lies about eight kilometres from the Pakistan border. Three people injured in the pre-dawn bombing arrived at the Torkham border post for treatment in Pakistan, the news agency reported.
The AIP said Shamshad was a base for the Mujahideen unit led by Abdul Rasool Sayaf, who joined the Northern Alliance following the rise of the Taliban in 1994.
POWER CUT: Kabul was plunged into darkness on Monday evening after power supplies were cut following clashes east of the capital, fighters from the Northern Alliance said.
They said the Alliance sent some 300 soldiers towards Jalalabad to retrieve the bodies of four journalists believed killed in an ambush earlier on Monday.
The clashes occurred near Sarobi township, some 60kms east of Kabul, where a hydroelectric plant that supplies power to the capital is located.
It was not clear whether the power cables were cut accidentally or deliberately, but the lights went out in Kabul around 8pm when the clashes took place.
The journalists were ambushed some 90kms east of Kabul in Nangarhar province.
The province was taken over by anti-Taliban tribal leaders last week, but pockets of Taliban and Arab fighters loyal to the Al Qaeda network are believed to be roaming in many parts of the country.
It was not clear whether the Alliance soldiers clashed with Taliban fighters or with rival anti-Taliban factions.
SWIFT ACTION: The head of the moderate National Islamic Front of Afghanistan (NIFA), Pir Sayad Ahmad Gailani, on Monday called for the swift creation of an interim government in Afghanistan in order to avoid disputes within Afghanistan.
In an interview with Iran’s state IRNA news agency, the exiled Afghan elder called for the “formation of an early consensus interim government in Afghanistan”.
“An interim government, with the backing of all Afghans, should be put in place at the earliest to rid the country of internal fighting and other disturbances,” Gailani said.
An “interim setup is a must to pave the way for the constitution of a broad-based government in Afghanistan”, said Gailani, a Pakhtoon royalist based in Peshawar.
He said a “meeting of all Afghans” would be held soon aimed at setting up a “multi-ethnic future government in Afghanistan”, as well as to take “crucial decisions with regards to reforms in the constitution as well”.
Gailani also expressed hope that a Loya Jirga would be set up soon, noting, however, that it is “not linked with the shah only”, a reference to former Afghan king Mohammed Zahir Shah.
The NIFA backs a return of the former king.
He called for the deployment of “peacekeeping forces for a short period in big cities like Kabul... under the charter of the United Nations” aimed at “helping to restore peace and discipline”.
BRITISH ENVOY: A senior British envoy arrived on in Kabul on Monday to set up a diplomatic mission there and start talks with local leaders, Downing Street said.
Stephen Evans, who was appointed late last week as London’s first diplomatic representative to Kabul since Soviet forces left in 1989, was accompanied by eight Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence officials.
“They will be setting up an embryonic diplomatic mission,” Prime Minister Tony Blair’s spokesman said.
He said it was a “significant development” after the Taliban regime crumbled following a series of victories by the Northern Alliance.—dpa/ Reuters/ AFP
